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Small scale gasification of woody biomass is a technology that has had a rapid development in the whole South Tyrol region in Italy. In few years, up to 40 plants have been authorized by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, and most of them are already operating. These gasification plants are co-generative systems, because the producer gas (i.e., the combustible gas produced as the main product of this process) is used in an internal combustion engine (ICE) to generate both electrical and thermal power. However, this process produces a solid carbonaceous by-product, known as char. More than 2000 ton of char are produced every year in the whole region, and at present they are managed as waste. However, char presents chemical and physical characteristics that make it a potentially interesting and valuable product in the view of pushing the gasification process from a co-generative to a poly-generative one. Within this context, the NEXT GENERATION project (i.e. NEXT in the followings) was funded by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, with the aim of getting insights on possible ways for char valorisation. The NEXT project started on June 2016 and lasts at the end of November 2017. In the present paper, preliminary results on eight different chars are presented and discussed.